Quotes By Pearl S. Buck

Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on.

We should so provide for old age that it may have no urgent wants of this world to absorb it from meditation on the next. It is awful to see the lean hands of dotage making a coffer of the grave.

I am mentally bifocal.

To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.

The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.

It may be that religion is dead, and if it is, we had better know it and set ourselves to try to discover other sources of moral strength before it is too late.

I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.

Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.

The basic discovery about any people is the discovery of the relationship between men and women.

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible - and achieve it, generation after generation.

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.

What is a neglected child? He is a child not planned for, not wanted. Neglect begins, therefore, before he is born.

Hunger makes a thief of any man.

A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.

Order is the shape upon which beauty depends.

One faces the future with one's past.

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.

All things are possible until they are proved impossible - and even the impossible may only be so, as of now.

Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.

Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.

Men would rather be starving and free than fed in bonds.

Praise out of season, or tactlessly bestowed, can freeze the heart as much as blame.

You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.

Chinese are wise in comprehending without many words what is inevitable and inescapable and therefore only to be borne.

To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth.

If our American way of life fails the child, it fails us all.

Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together.

The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband's bravery is only bravado, that his strength is only a uniform, that his power is but a gun in the hands of a fool.

To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.